I'm from Minnesota. Now I live here, embarking on my ninth year as a tourist in NYC. I finally live alone. I'm starting my second year living in Ridgewood. I love Queens.

What I’m doing with my life

I teach math to kids and I spend most of my time thinking about it (math, adolescence, inequality, fatalism, etc).

I run around Queens.

I had my dad send me his old roller skates. Soon I will do that.

I'm trying to chill; it's not my native setting.

I’m really good at

belting top 40 hits at/with my students.

hoarding writing utensils. If I see a pencil on the floor it's going in my pocket. Unless it isn't sharpened. Then it's staying right where it is 'cause nobody's got time for all that.

saving shards of Dial soap too small for shower duty and using them as hand soap. There's usually a pile of them next to my bathroom faucet. Gross? Maybe. Most people never see it; I've got a bottle of Ms Meyers stashed away for special events.

ordering from Amazon in ridiculous excess and missing the return deadline. I somehow ended up with like fifty roles of paper towels. There's a roll in every room. Again, when I need to create that illusion of normalcy for my guests, I've got toilet paper, but paper towels are my new normal.

wearing Crocs. They're insanely comfortable. They're also hideous.

biking to places, even when the temperature is prohibitive and I get sweatier than is socially acceptable.

smelling everything.

The first things people usually notice about me

I'm a six five bald man.

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

In books, movies, and TV, I gravitate to schadenfreude, dystopia, and organized crime. Also, I am a bottomless pit for stuff about corporate scandal or financial crisis.

In books, non-fiction is my safe place. I'm wary of made-up stories; the stuff happening on earth every day is past anyone's imagination. But I have been blown away by fiction.

Music lists are ridiculous. I am blown away daily by songs I haven't heard, new and old, all genres; music is life. Prince is both my gender and music hero. Pop music is all that matters.

The actual lists, in the prescribed order:A Team of Rivals, 1984, The Foundation trilogy, Harry Potter, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Song of Ice and Fire, A People's History of the United States, The Big Short, All the Pretty Horses, The Selfish Gene, The Body Keeps the Score, A Conspiracy of Fools, Fermat's Last Theorem

The Big Lebowski, Goodfellas, This is Spinal Tap, Groundhog Day, Boyz N the Hood, Aladdin, Fargo, Adaptation, Wayne's World, Back to the Future, Network, No Country for Old Men, Sicario, Whiplash, The Big Short, Nightcrawler

I'm coming off of a pretty serious Seamless addiction. Youtube is teaching me how to cook. I'm trying to stay grain free because it keeps me relatively good looking. I've got breakfast and lunch down; dinner is my Everest. I'm eating a lot of nachos, but I make them myself and they have at least five ingredients, so by my own metrics I'm doing...okay. In an ideal universe I'd be vegetarian/vegan because good vegetarian/vegan is the best, but that's some zen-level cooking and I can barely make nachos.

I finally finished an issue of The Economist. I skipped a few of the letters to the editor, but it still counts.

If it happened in the 90s I'm probably into it. Especially if it's hip-hop, or video games, or pop music in general, or other things that are amazing, like pizza Lunchables or the Always Coca-Cola jingle.

Until way too recently I thought John Fogerty was saying "Yay me."

The six things I could never do without

People I trustSomething to readA device for writingApples/avocadosGoals/dreamsSleep

I spend a lot of time thinking about

what I'm going to eat next, worst-case scenarios, whether or not I should have more coffee, the future where everyone knows what everyone else is thinking and what a relief that will be probably

On a typical Friday night I am

staying out until my friends aren't looking. Then I make a break for it.

The most private thing I’m willing to admit

I've ordered Dominos for dinner two nights in a row. I'm pretty sure I only did this once but I can't/won't say for sure.

Dancing terrifies me. I love it, but my skills are...not great.

I can't stop editing this thing. I'm one sentence away from perfection.

You should message me if

you also spend considerable time thinking about what you're about to eat. If you're chill that would be great.